Shadowlands

by Kate Brian

  We followed Messenger down the stairs. I plucked my rain jacket from its hook and trailed my family out the front door, where dozens of police cars sat silently, their lights flashing. The rain was coming down hard. I tugged my hood up to cover my hair. A big black SUV sat in the center of our driveway, its chrome hubcaps glossy from the rain.

  My dad was just reaching for the driver’s side door handle, when Messenger’s phone let out a pealing screech. We all froze. Maybe they’d found him. Maybe we didn’t have to leave.

  “Yes. Yes, I understand,” Messenger said. “Of course, sir. Yes. We’re on our way now.” She shoved the phone in her pocket and opened the car door for my dad. So much for that. “Do not stop until you are out of the state,” she instructed. “Do not make any calls, don’t tell anyone who you really are, and stick to your new backstories. Any questions?”

  “Will an agent meet us there?” my dad said.

  Messenger shook her head. “All our manpower will be dedicated to hunting this guy down. You have top security—I’m only one of a handful of agents who even knows where this safe house is and we can’t risk blowing your location. I’ll be in touch next week—and I’ll hopefully be bringing you home then. Anything else?”

  “No,” he said. “No, I’m fine.”

  But there was fear behind his eyes, and my palms started to sweat. I hadn’t seen my dad look scared since right before my mom died. Sad, yes. Angry, every day. But scared? Never.

  “Good,” she said. “Now hit the road.”

  She turned, folded her tall frame behind the wheel of her car, and slammed the door.

  For a long moment, my father, Darcy, and I just stood there. All I wanted to do was go back inside, crawl into bed, and bury my head under the pillows. It was our house. Our home. I saw my sister and me playing tea party on the porch when we were little. Saw my mom planting flowers along the front walk. Saw my dad teaching me how to roller-skate in the driveway. Saw the hearse arriving to take my mother away the day she died. Saw my father weeping in my grandma’s arms on the front step. There were awful memories in this house, many I’d rather forget, but there were a lot of good ones, too. My heart constricted at the thought of leaving them all behind—at leaving my mom behind.

  As I opened the back door, I saw Darcy wipe at her eyes. She got in next to my father and hunkered down. A few of the patrol cars backed up and out of the way to make room as we pulled out of the drive. My father cleared his throat and shifted the SUV into gear, then drove down the street. When we got to the stop sign at the end of the street, I turned around to take one last look at the brick facade of my home, my fingers digging into the faux-leather seat. Then my dad took the turn, and the house disappeared behind the trees.

  And so she was on the run. It wasn’t the way he usually did things, but he could adjust. He could adapt. That was the mark of a highly developed human being.

  He crouched in the neighbors’ yard, behind a child’s playhouse, and watched. He watched the sister curse under her breath as she yanked open the car door. Watched the father struggling with his own emotions as he took the wheel. Those two were so predictable. It almost made him want to kill them first. To do that for her. To rid her of them before he took what he needed.

  Then he watched her. Watched her flick her hood up over that lovely hair. Watched her curl into her seat. Saw her staring at her own bedroom window, longing for it even after he had invaded it.

  He waited until the SUV had pulled out of the driveway and started down the street. Then he stood up, shook the water from his police hat, and flicked on his flashlight. No one looked at him as he made his way around the side of the house, through the blooming azalea hedge and across the walk. No one blinked when he popped open the door of the idling police cruiser. He smiled and flicked on the stereo, then jammed the car into gear.

  No one had a clue.

  “Authorities are still scouring the state for accused serial killer Roger Krauss,” the radio announcer said in her nasally voice. “The man who is believed to have murdered fourteen girls and attacked one more is still at large—”

  Darcy hit the OFF button on the radio. My dad shot her an irked look, which she ignored. I wondered if Christopher was watching the news. If he had tried to call me. If on Monday, when we weren’t at school, he would realize that we’d had to run. If only I’d called him before I’d found the sick present Steven Nell had left on my bed, before Messenger had taken our phones. I would have given anything right now just to hear his voice.

  It was four in the morning and we’d been driving nonstop for seven hours. We’d barely spoken, the only sounds the tires thrumming over the highway; the radio, which Darcy kept turning on and off intermittently; and the mechanical voice of the GPS, which was leading us down I-95 to our final destination in South Carolina. The roads had been nearly empty, save for the occasional sedan and eighteen-wheeler delivering cargo from one state to the next.

  “This must be the most boring stretch of land in America,” my father muttered through his teeth, hunching over the steering wheel as he squinted out the windshield. The rain had let up somewhere in Maryland, and now we were in Virginia, surrounded by a dense thicket of trees on either side of the highway, dividing us from northbound traffic and the farmlands to the west. It felt like the scenery hadn’t changed in hours.

  My body was heavy. I’d been fighting to stay awake—scared of the nightmares that I knew would overtake me as soon as I closed my eyes—but it was a losing battle. I’d been blearily watching the exits pass, one by one, counting the miles we were putting between us and the place where Mr. Nell had attacked me. Each mile made me feel safer, calmer, until my breathing grew steady and my eyelids lowered as I felt sleep overtake me.

  A loud horn blared, and my eyes snapped open. The car was suddenly flooded with light. I twisted around in my seat. A huge truck was bearing down on us, its brights so blinding I could barely make out the boxy shape of the cab. My heart lurched into my throat, and my dad sat up straight, glaring into the rearview mirror.

  “What’s this jackass doing?”

  A loud horn sounded again and I screamed.

  “What the hell?” Darcy turned in her seat and squinted, lifting a hand to block the light. “Just go around, asshole!” she shouted.

  “Darcy!” my dad hollered. “Language!”

  And then the truck bumped us from behind. Now all three of us screamed. My father swerved, and there was a screech of tires.

  “Oh my god, it’s him. It’s him!” I cried, curling forward, my head between my hands and my forehead to my knees. In my mind’s eye, I pictured Steven Nell behind the wheel of the truck, his thin lips peeled back to reveal yellowed teeth as he bore down on my family.

  The truck slammed into us again, and my head snapped forward. I pictured his cracked, dry knuckles as he clung to the steering wheel, the ugly bags under his sadistic eyes, that faded plaid shirt and awful corduroy jacket he’d been wearing in the woods.

  “It’s not him, Rory,” my father said, sounding panicked. “It’s some drunk who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  The truck’s engine was so loud in my ear I could have sworn we were under the tractor trailer’s hood. Another crash. The car lurched. My father cursed as he struggled with the wheel.

  “What!?” Darcy screeched, one hand braced against the dashboard. “What is it?”

  “Our bumper’s stuck to his truck.”

  Suddenly, the truck revved again, and our car started to speed out of control toward a looming green exit sign. My stomach bottomed out. This was it. We were going to die. My family was going to die.

  “Dad! What’re you doing?” Darcy cried.

  “It’s not me! It’s him!” my father shouted, his hands off the wheel.

  “Dad! Do something! Do something!” I screamed.

  But it was too late. There was an awful screaming, squealing sound of tires burning on pavement. Then we were spinning. The force of it threw me against the side of
the car. My skull slammed into the window. Everything jarred. Everything hurt. My shoulder. My knees. My ribs. My heart. The car spun again, rattling my insides. I felt something tug at my chest, tug at my mind. Like I was trying to float outside the car and into the ether, trying to escape what was happening. For a split second, I was hovering outside my body, looking down, watching myself cower in fear. Then we spun once more, and I felt the seat belt cut into my thighs. Darcy’s screams grew louder, pained, desperate. And then, all of a sudden, we stopped. There was another deafening engine growl, and the peeling of tires as the truck took off into the night. Then everything went painfully, eerily silent.

  “Girls? Girls!” My father’s eyes bulged as he struggled with his seat belt.

  My stomach was turning itself inside out, on fire, trying to rip itself free of my body. I undid my own belt and doubled over, gasping for breath.

  “Dad?” Darcy croaked. I turned my face and looked up. She kept going cross-eyed as she tried to focus and she finally closed her eyes, rubbed them, then opened them again. He reached out to touch her cheeks, turning her head back and forth slowly as she blinked at him.

  “’M fine,” she muttered.

  “Rory?” Dad said.

  “I’m okay,” I gasped. “I think.” Slowly, I began to sit up, my hand over my stomach. The pain was still there, but I was able to take a deep breath without wanting to pass out.

  The truck had pushed us off the highway, and we’d come to a stop down a steep, grassy embankment, just yards from the concrete off-ramp. The highway loomed overhead, out of view and quiet.

  My father swallowed so hard I heard the gulp. He opened his door with a piercing creak. “Stay here.”

  “Wait! Where’re you going?” I blurted, grabbing for his shoulder over the back of his seat.

  “I’m going to see if we still have a bumper,” he said grimly, making it clear he was doubtful. “I need to see if we can still drive the car.”

  “But—”

  “But what?” he said impatiently.

  “What if he’s still out there?” I asked in a quiet voice. “What if he’s just waiting for—”

  “It wasn’t Steven Nell, Rory,” my father said gently.

  My eyes burned with hot tears that I barely managed to hold back. “How do you know?”

  “He’s right,” Darcy said, turning in her seat. “If it was him, he would’ve stuck around to make sure the job was done, right? Do you hear anything? Do you see the truck?”

  I swallowed back a sob that was lodged in my throat and looked around. It was too dark to see much beyond the dense wall of trees, but the off-ramp was silent. Even the highway was dead.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice cracking. I cleared my throat and looked at my dad. “Okay.”

  He turned off the engine, pocketed the keys, and got out. I pressed my nose to the window, trying to watch him, but there was nothing outside the windows. Nothing but blackness.

  “Darcy, do you see Dad?” I said urgently.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, picking at her silver nail polish.

  A minute ticked by. Then another. My heart pounded painfully. “What could be taking so long?”

  Darcy shrugged and went to open the door.

  I lunged forward. “Don’t go out there!”

  “Rory.” My sister leveled me with a controlling stare. “It’s fine. I’m just going to tell him we want to get the eff out of here.”

  “Don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Something’s not right.”

  And that’s when I heard it. The low, mournful whistle, as clear as day.

  It was the Beatles song “The Long and Winding Road.”

  “Darcy,” I gasped.

  Darcy’s eyes widened, and she sat up straight.

  “Oh my god,” she breathed. “Mr. Nell always whistled that in the hallways.”

  She reached over to the driver’s side and flicked on the headlights with a decisive snap. The yellow glow of the headlights caught in the misty air, illuminating the grassy expanse next to the embankment, the looming thicket of trees, and…

  I inhaled sharply, blinking rapidly. It couldn’t…it just couldn’t be.

  “Is that…Dad…?” Darcy said, her voice barely a whisper.

  Our father lay in the middle of the off-ramp, his neck bent at an unnatural angle. His mouth frozen open in a scream. His dead eyes staring straight at us.

  Before I could process what I was seeing, before I could put a name to what was happening, a rock came careening through the back windshield of the SUV, shattering the glass and spraying me with debris.

  Darcy and I screamed.

  It was happening again. Again. Again. Again. Only this time Darcy was with me. And my dad…I drove my fingernails into my thighs, willing myself to act. Mr. Nell was out there. My father was dead. And in seconds, we would be dead, too. It was time to move.

  “Darcy, we have to go. Now,” I said through my teeth, shoving open my door.

  She didn’t move. My feet hit the pavement, and I dashed around the car to her side.

  Don’t look, I commanded myself, angling my gaze away from my father. I tore open the passenger-side door and yanked Darcy from the seat.

  “Come on,” I urged, but Darcy just sat there, a horror-struck expression on her face.

  “Darcy! We have to run, do you hear me?” I said, grasping her hands. “Run!”

  Finally, my sister snapped to focus. She grasped my fingers, and together we sprinted toward the thicket of trees separating the southbound traffic from the northbound lanes.

  “We have to get to the other side of the highway,” I told her through gasps for breath, a plan crystallizing in my brain. Our side of the highway was dead—but maybe there were cars going north. “We have to flag down a car.”

  Darcy nodded, keeping pace with me step for step.

  The woods pressed in thick around us. It wasn’t raining anymore, but fat droplets from the earlier downpour dripped off the leaves overhead, plopping onto my shoulders and hair. My breath was jagged in my chest. Branches tore at our skin, tattooing our flesh with angry red marks. I looked briefly behind us, and a tree branch snapped into my cheek. Instinctively, my hand went to my face. When I pulled it away, it was sticky with blood.

  “Rory Miller,” a sickly familiar voice called. “Where did you go?”

  The sound of footsteps thundered behind us, next to us, in front of us. They were everywhere and nowhere, bouncing off the trees with the same disembodied echo as the voice.

  “Rory,” Darcy panted, her eyes wide. “What if he catches us?”

  “He won’t!” I insisted.

  I thought of my first cross-country race in fifth grade. Of my mom’s smiling face, already thinned out from the treatments, as she waited for me at the finish line. I’d slowed my steps as the final marker came into view, letting the person a few paces behind me pass me and pull away. I didn’t want the spotlight, even then. I wanted the shadows. I didn’t run to win. I ran to free my mind.

  But now I had to win. We had to win. Because if we didn’t, if we didn’t get away, if we let fear take over, we would lose everything.

  A huge tree loomed ahead, and Darcy broke her grip on my hand so we could run on either side of it. I sprinted forward, but when I reached out to take her hand once more, all I grabbed was air.

  “Darcy!” I whispered, not slowing my pace as I looked around. “Where did you go?”

  “Rory?” a faint voice called.

  “Darcy!”

  “Rory?” the voice came again.

  I stopped and whirled around. The wooded area dividing the highway was much larger than I’d anticipated, and I was in a clearing about twenty feet wide. There was a break in the clouds, revealing a perfect half moon hanging overhead.

  “Darcy!” I shouted, suddenly not caring if it drew Mr. Nell to me. I had to find my sister. “Darcy! Where are you?”

  Birds took off from a tree overhead. A squirrel scampered past my
feet. A soft moan sounded in the distance. Minutes felt like hours as I whirled around and around, looking for Darcy.

  Then I saw it.

  A long, pale finger peeked out from a tangle of low bushes and brush. The nail was painted a shimmery silver that glowed in the moonlight.

  “No,” I whispered, my blood flowing like ice through my veins. “No, no, no.”

  Slowly, so slowly, I cut through the clearing. Dead leaves crackled underfoot. A twig snapped. Fallen pine needles rustled like sandpaper on wood, and an owl hooted in the distance. Too soon I reached the hand. Heart in my throat, I pushed back the brush. A loud sob escaped my lips.

  My sister—my beautiful sister—was lying there. She was on her stomach, her arms over her head like she had been struck down mid-dive into a swimming pool. Her dark hair fanned out in all angles, hiding her face—but not the deep gash in the back of her skull.

  “Oh god, oh god.”

  Panic swelled within me as I grabbed her wrist. Her skin was still warm, but when I fumbled for her pulse, my heart shattered. There was nothing. Nothing. Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the blood matting my sister’s hair. Darcy, the girl who wore a tutu for an entire year, who’d kicked Grant Sibley when he pulled my braid in fourth grade, who’d sometimes picked on me until I cried but who I loved desperately, was dead. And so was my dad.

  My family, everyone I loved, was gone.

  “Rory Miller…” a disembodied voice whispered behind me.

  I spun around. A figure was standing there, hooded and dark, a shadow come to life.

  Steven Nell.

  He wore the awful tan corduroy jacket over a dark blue shirt. His wire-rimmed glasses glinted in the moonlight, and he held a long knife in one hand and a bloody rock in the other. His nose was flat where I’d broken it, his cheekbones sharp, and his ice-blue eyes were narrowed at me.

  “Miss me?” he simpered.

  Bile rose in my throat. “You killed my sister,” I hissed, rage and grief battling in me. “You killed my dad.”

  Mr. Nell smirked. “I wouldn’t have had to if you’d just come with me. But you didn’t play by the rules.” The silver knife at his side gleamed. “Are you going to be a good girl now and behave?”